Reception
by Punctuator
Summary: What would a pre-wedding get-together be without a certified but beautiful psychopath, a terrifying mother-in-law or two, and random embarrassing misunderstandings? A lot more dignified than what lies below. Toss one back, folks: it's party time...!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** In addition to fluff, general silliness, and some really rotten metaphors, the following story contains references to _Underground, Lux, Mad Jack, Madder Rose,_ and even that perennial oddball _The "L" Word._ Feel free to fire off questions and comments if things get confusing. Better yet, check out those other tales o' woe. Won't make any sterling claims regarding what's on deck right now, but some of the forerunners aren't half bad. That said, belly on up to the bar, folks. The party's about to begin...

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**RED EYE: RECEPTION**

Lisa Reisert's face was hot. All the hotter for it being a cold and overcast day. She was on the second-story balcony of Jackson Rippner's condo, overlooking the Atlantic; she was on the phone. And on the other end of the line was the one person on Earth who could, without fail, every single time, short-circuit her customer-service powers. The one person with or to whom she couldn't be a people-pleaser twenty-four-seven.

Her mom.

Lisa's cheeks felt as though they'd been slathered with Tiger Balm. She focused on a seagull bobbing in the whitecaps twenty yards offshore while Joan Reisert (_nee_ and once-again Colbert) talked a stream of relationship advice into her ear. She'd braced herself before the call to Dallas— she was her mother's only daughter, and she was getting married, and such news warranted a certain amount of freaking out on practically any mother's part— but nearly thirty minutes past the announcement, and Joan's shriek of surprise (Lisa was hesitant to think of it as a shriek of delight, as the sound was joltingly reminiscent of the sound the Reisert family beagle, Turko, had emitted when Lisa, then eight years old, had accidentally ridden her bicycle over Turko's tail), the outer edge of sanity was looming large. She wondered if seagulls ever got eaten by sharks. If, floating on the surface, they were visible from below. If the splash of their landing, or the paddling of their webbed feet, was enough to put them on a predator's sonar. After all, Jackson had said, largemouth bass occasionally snatched and gulped down swimming ducklings. If Lisa were that seagull, she'd be putting the question to the test right now. She'd be kicking for all she was worth. Flailing. Slapping the waves with her wings. Plunging her head underwater and screaming through her long beak: "Come and get it!"

In her right ear, Joan, oblivious, droned on:_ All I'm saying, honey, is you've been out of circulation for a while. He might seem like the best thing since Tampax, but you shouldn't feel obliged to marry the first man to get back in your panties._

Lisa flinched. "Do I really need to say I can't believe you said that, Mom?"

_Are you pregnant, Lisa?_

"No."

_Are you sure?_

"No. I mean— Yes. Mom, I'm not—"

_Then test yourself. Twice. Make sure. And remember: if you're trying to trap him with a baby, it won't work._

"Mom, no: stop—" She felt as if she were sleepwalking toward the edge of a cliff. Maybe the cliffs of Cornwall, as they appeared in _Paranoiac_. Nothing but day-for-night-filtered sky and empty space ahead. The promise of pummeling waves and skull-splitting rocks far below. She found herself mentally chanting _Jump, jump, jump._ "I didn't mean— I meant to say—"

_Ask me, Lisa: I know. You might think it's a good idea: find a hot guy, hook him with a pregnancy. You know that's how your father and I ended up together, don't you? Because of you? You're old enough to know that._

Which, Lisa thought, makes me a hooker, in a manner of speaking. _Thanks, Mom._

Emergency measures. She knew it was awful of her (conversely, as Jackson might put it, she was beginning to understand why Joan heard from her daughter, on average, only twice a month, if that), but she couldn't take much more. She needed a break. "Can you hold, Mom? There's someone on the other line." Before her mother could reply, Lisa clicked over to the second line and listened, with her eyes closed, to eight seconds of blessed hiss. She clicked back to line one. "Mom, are you still there?"

_Of course I'm still here, Lisa. Just remember, he'll resent it. He might not say a word at first, but he'll—"_

"Mom— Mom? Listen: I've got to go. There's a huge sinkhole—"

_— end up hating you forever, and you'll have no other choice than to crawl into a bottle and drink away the pain—_

"— opening up right in the lobby, and the Lux— the lobby— the whole hotel— is falling into—"

_— but at least you'll have your beautiful children. Lisa, there's nothing more important than the love of—_

"Love you, too, Mom. Gotta go. Bye."

She hung up. Then she stood there shaking. The urge to fling the phone off the balcony was so strong that Lisa felt that if she merely held onto the handset, it would yank her with it into space. Behind her, she heard the glass door slide open. A moment later, Jackson Rippner was standing unobtrusively beside her. A bit of irony, there: the fact that subtle motion lent itself as well to tact and relationships as to covert ops and assassinations. Beneath the cloudy sky and his brushy brows, his eyes were sympathetic and thoughtful and more darkly sapphire blue than usual; the wind molded the fine knit of his pale green sweater to the lean muscles of his torso and arms. He carried two uncapped bottles of beer; he offered her one. Lisa took it. "Thanks."

Maybe the sales contract for the condo had included days like this. In terms of temperature, anyway, if not temperament. She knew he sometimes missed the north, just as she sometimes missed Miami when they were working out of Chicago. For Florida, the day was unseasonably chilly. Unlatitudinally chilly. Wind buffeted her hair and his, flicked foam from the tips of the waves sliding gray-green toward the sandy shore.

Jackson followed her sightline from the phone to the water. "You could order a hit on her, you know," he said. "You have the power. Think about it: it would be more ecologically sound than another phone battery corroding in the ocean."

Lisa sipped her beer. She was supposed to say "That isn't funny." What she said, instead, was "Don't tempt me."

He settled in next to her, their shoulders nearly touching, his left elbow inches from her right one on the railing of the balcony. Sunlight lancing through crevices in the clouds struck matched coppery highlights from the crowns of their heads.

For now, Lisa felt no inclination to go inside. Post-Joan, the wind and the cold felt nothing but refreshing. She took a long drink of her beer. "People say that women turn into their mothers."

"Yes. So?"

"Doesn't that concern you?"

"Nope. Want to know why?"

"Because you'd simply order the hit on _me_?"

"No. Because you're the exception to the rule. You're like your dad."

Though she didn't smile, Lisa untensed slightly. She said: "I asked him once why he didn't get back into the dating pool once he and Mom broke up."

"Can I tell you what his reply was?"

"Please do."

"He enjoyed the quiet too much."

"Mm hm. That, and 'Only back to Texas? I was hoping she'd keep going until she hit Australia.'"

Rippner smiled. He let her drink her beer in peace, and was content to keep her company. Space within proximity, proximity within space, some-such relationship psychology mumbo-jumbo that was, nevertheless, absolutely accurate. They had no big plans for their wedding: their respective bachelor and bachelorette shindigs, two weeks ago, followed by next week's party at the Lux Atlantic to announce their engagement, were about as epic as things were going to get. The way Rippner saw it, they'd had a chance to get hammered with their friends. Now they'd be getting hammered together. Before _being_ hammered together, as it were, into a shiny new united front.

"Shindigs," almost by definition, implied shenanigans, and there the girls had taken the lead. During the ladies'(-question-mark) outing for Lisa, Rippner's boss, the golden-haired, perpetually tousled, and admittedly Amazonian Claire Carter, had managed to get herself and wide-eyed Cynthia, Lisa's right-hand girl at the Lux, arrested as the result of a mysterious maneuver called "the figure-eight." Rippner wasn't quite clear on the specifics, though, from what he could piece together, "tag-team mooning" might have been a moderately accurate description. Too bad the girls' third target had been an unmarked Miami police car, occupied, appropriately, by two Miami police officers. Rippner was quietly proud of the fact that Lisa had managed to take Claire down before Claire, taking umbrage at the officers' deficient senses of humor regarding said figure-eight, could consign the representatives of Miami's finest to a stint in the hospital. Granted, Claire's jeans had been around her ankles when Lisa blindsided her; nonetheless, that was one video log that wasn't going to be erased any time soon. One for the ladies. (Or two, if you counted the tattoo. The tattoo that somehow ended up on Lisa's backside after Cynthia blacked— or backed— or chickened out. Rippner had to admit he liked it: a little smiling cartoon Elberta was, if you pardoned the expression, just peachy as far as he was concerned.) And one for the guys on Rippner's night to howl, when Claire's husband, tall-dark-and-gargantuan John, for whom the word "tequila" translated roughly as "HULK SMASH!", tackled and tipped over a SmartCar.

"It was parked," John had said, sounding a bit stunned. "Nearly. It was nearly parked."

That, as they hustled him away from the scene of the crime, Rippner on one side, data-whiz Paul Miller on the other, each gripping a muscle-roped arm.

"The guy was at a _stop sign,_ John," Paul panted.

Now, two weeks later, Rippner sipped his pale ale and relaxed in the company of his best girl in all the world. Crazy impending moms-in-law be damned. Compared to John and that fucking SmartCar, and the had-to-be-a-linebacker who'd extricated himself from the thing and chased them for six blocks, the engagement party at the Lux was going to be a cakewalk.

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The plate read "BABY."

The bumper to which it was affixed belonged to a gleaming black Mini Cooper S with a full Cooperworks sports package and a bit more under the bonnet than the home team back in Yorkshire had originally provided. Acquisition of said plate had required the removal— tidy, timely, and quite terminal— of merely three other applicants from the Florida vanity-plate pool. A bargain, really.

"Be gentle with her, darling," Rosemary Wheeler said to the valet, in the kind of purr that suggested a crisp twenty would be just the beginning of his tip if he did as he was told, as she alighted from Baby's cozy black-on-black interior. A smile, then, a flash of teeth, a bit of dazzle for the doorman, and she sauntered into the main lobby of the Lux Atlantic.

Rosemary, the mistress of disguise, was tonight masquerading only as herself, in a blue sheath dress so curve-hugging that she expected to wake tomorrow to find a "WET PAINT" sign taped to her back. At the entrance of the hotel's swankiest party room, where the top-level intros were taking place, she moved through the crowd seemingly unseen. As Rosemary entered, the woman who had to be Ellen Rippner, the widowed Mrs. James Rippner, a lean, graying, evenly worn brunette in a dark suit-dress, seemed to be mounting a most effective attack on her future daughter-in-law without, so to say, having to fire a single shot: Rosemary passed by in time to hear voice the world's coldest "I'm glad to meet you, Lisa." The target of her volley was wearing a beneficent smile, dimples, and the type of sickeningly modest dress (a shimmering concoction in degrees of cream and silver) that Jackson Rippner, flanking her at present like a loyal Weimaraner, would no doubt peel off of her like candy floss once the evening was done. "Mom: no freezer burn tonight, okay?" Rosemary heard him say. "Lisa's one of the good guys."

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Not all the torments of hell. Not, by standards modern or ancient, torture. Just a patch of "bad" en route to the "good." The "good" was the trays of canapes, the buffet, the open bar, the hours of snide comments that lay ahead.

The "bad" was speech-time. Jackson, wisely, no doubt would refuse a turn at the mike. No telling who— besides Rosemary— might take a shot at him while he was waxing poetic. Dear Lisa was too delightfully self-effacing and, at this point in the evening, not nearly intoxicated enough to be expected to toot her own nuptial horn. Unfortunately, that still left her father. The burly, grizzle-headed poster-boy for Men's Wearhouse making his way to the front of the room with the air of a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials: that had to be him. Odd, Rosemary thought, that he seemed so eager to open the treacly floodgates of oration without Lisa's mother being present. Either, like Jackson's father, the former Mrs. Reisert was dead, she was a real piece of work, or she simply didn't exist. Rosemary opted for number three. Someone as divine as Jackson's auburn-haired goddess would simply have sprung full-blown from the head of Jove.

Or Joe, as the case might be.

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She chose a tactical vantage point in a shadowy corner near the bar. A spot from which to see without necessarily being seen. And a location that would put her first in line when the rush for drinks began. Rosemary looked out at the room. John and Claire Carter were standing across the way, looking tall and elegant and terribly self-important. Paul Miller, their primary data-handler, was on hand in the herd, too, a straw-haired wraith in a blue suit. That he had a crush on Rippner had been less than a secret for years; at present, he was lurking near the buffet, his creepily pale eyes focused mournfully on the object of his desire, who was obliviously sharing a schoolkids chuckle-and-blush with the equally unaware Miss Reisert.

Rosemary relaxed against the bar and prepared to endure the inevitable. From a low dais near the room's double-wide doors, Joe Reisert peered down through his lineless bifocals at the piece of paper in his right hand. His amplified voice rumbled out through the room's wall speakers: "I have— excuse me—" The obligatory rasp of static as he fiddled with the remote microphone he held. "— a few words—"

_Here, Joe, _thought Rosemary, as conversations sputtered out and the partygoers turned like good little zombies toward the front of the room,_ allow me: Blah._

"— regarding my daughter, Lisa—"

_Oh, dear God, not the entire rap sheet. Think of us mere mortals._

"— whom I've come to think of not as my little girl—"

_And "blah," and "blah," and— just for shits and giggles— "blah."_

_"_— but as a very special young woman, a very intelligent and strong young woman I'm privileged to know—"

_For variety, we can always throw in an "urp." Gastrointestinal deja vu. Good lord, did I really have onions for lunch?_

"— and whose love and loyalty I cherish—"

_Dear Lisa has all the charm and functionality of a cocker spaniel: yes, Mr. Reisert, I'll grant you that._

"— and reciprocate."

_Too many syllables, Joe. You just lost both Jackson and John._

"I'll keep this brief—"

_Too late._

"— I met Jackson Rippner under unusual circumstances. I'll be honest: I've had my doubts about him—"

_You are, of course, not the only one._

"— But he's conducted himself honorably; he's earned my respect. In this day and age, that counts for something.—"

_Not nearly as much as unlimited power, money, and a loaded Glock, but please: do continue._

"—More importantly, I trust Lisa. I trust her judgment. I trust Jackson, too. I'll be happy to welcome him to the family.—"

_And thus it came to pass that every diabetic in Miami simultaneously exploded._

"— So, officially, tonight's big announcement: Lisa and Jackson are engaged. Engaged to be married, that is—"

_Because "engaged in mortal combat" would, I imagine, be too much to ask._ Rosemary rolled her eyes through the whistles and applause.

From the dais, Joe Reisert grinned out at the room. At his darling daughter and her tame assassin, so dapper, lovely, and perfectly matched that if you coated them in Lucite, they could be the topper on their own wedding cake. "Tonight's second announcement," Reisert added: "— the food, lodging, and drinks are on us. Have fun, folks. Thanks for coming."

_Amen._ Rosemary turned to the bartender and ordered her first martini of the evening.

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Before Rosemary had her drink in hand, less, in fact, than thirty seconds after the end of the speech, the obligatory cheek-kisses, the hugs, the blushing and the beaming, Lisa Reisert cornered her. Like a fucking torpedo that, had there been a God, would have turned hot-fish and blown its launching sub clear to Mars. But there was no God, at least not among the water features and potted palms of the executive party room of the Lux Atlantic. Lisa walked up to the bar and said, with ice in her tone and flint in her gray-blue eyes: "Miss Wheeler."

"Miss Reisert."

Rippner was nowhere to be seen. How terribly trusting of him. Lisa continued: "Shall we get right down to it?"

"Oh, do let's."

"I could have you thrown out."

"So have me thrown out. Have me arrested, while you're at it. Broward County serves a wicked baloney sandwich."

"You impersonated me in a sex video."

"I was slumming."

"You shot Jackson."

"You shot him, too." Rosemary scanned the room, spotted Rippner talking to the Carters. No doubt about her, the proverbial fox in the booze-filled henhouse. "Look at him, the smug bastard. There are two types of people in the world, Lisa: those who've shot Jackson, and those who are waiting their turn. It's practically expected. He's used to it."

"You tried to blow up the hotel—"

"And you'll notice how the man with the Mountain-Berry-Blast eyes was right there to save the day."

"You drugged me; you hit me. You shot my chief of security—"

"And, again: it got better. You broke my nose. Your idiot co-worker nearly broke it again. You threw me off a balcony—"

"We were all falling. You _tripped_, missy."

"— and had me stabbed. If you think about it, Snow White, you tried to order your first hit on me. I'd say we're about even." Rosemary looked at her critically. "Poor thing, you look all done in. I think I need a drink."

"I think you do, too."

Rosemary turned back to the bar, downed her first martini, and ordered a second. In the minute it took for the initial infusion of vodka to work its magic in her brain, Rippner installed himself at the far end of the bar, where he sat nonchalantly not-watching from a safe distance. "Safe" in that, if worst came to worst, he could have a cocktail skewer embedded in the evil Miss Wheeler's carotid artery in under five seconds. While Lisa waited on a mojito, Rosemary ate the olive out of her second martini and smirked in Rippner's general direction.

"Someday you'll be the death of him, Lisa. Someday, because of you, he'll hesitate. And whoever he's fighting won't."

"You're hesitating right now, Rosemary."

"Social niceties. Hardly polite to kill a woman at her own engagement party. Not when there's such a nice buffet and the liquor is free."

"Why don't you come in?"

A second's disconnect on the startle. Rosemary stopped in mid-sip. Her smirk became something more incredulous. "Are you offering me a job? Are you actually offering _me _a job—?"

"You're a seasoned agent, Rosemary. You're intelligent; you're creative—"

"Is this the Carters talking? Their usual twaddle about making the best possible use of available resources—?"

"Or you know what they say about keeping your enemies closer."

Rosemary looked across the room at Rippner, who had left the bar to talk to Joe Reisert and a delicate, auburn-haired woman Rosemary didn't recognize. A stunner, that one. Wearing the charcoal-gray seal-sleek sibling of Rosemary's dress, and she had the body to pull it off, too. Lisa was thanking the bartender for her drink when the woman greeted Rippner with a smile and a kiss. _Heads up, Lisa dear,_ Rosemary thought. _Someone just joined me on the 'watch' list_.

"I'd be close enough to steal him, Lisa," she said, aloud, once Lisa had finished sucking up to the help. "Never mind that I'd have open access to the company's databases. I'd take him away from you."

"If it were that easy, you could have him."

"And if it were that easy, then I wouldn't want him, and you know it." Despite herself, Rosemary smiled. "You're not as empty-headed as you look, Reisert."

"And you're not quite the bitch you think you are, Wheeler." Lisa met Rosemary's eyes for a long, even moment before glancing back out at the room. "Will you excuse me?" She looked suddenly stricken. "My mother just came in."

_You would have sounded happier,_ thought Rosemary, _if you'd just announced that a tornado was heading straight for the building_. "Of course."

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To almost anyone but her son Larry, Joan Reisert (now once-again Colbert) was the rum-runner version of her daughter, preserved, post-wreck, metaphorically speaking, in a nineteenth-century hurricane on the razorback shoals off Key West, by the forces of a sunny climate, L'Oreal, and Absolut. In the here-and-now, she had already targeted John and Claire Carter. "Lisa told me you were dead," she gushed to John. She'd only just arrived, and already she sounded like she'd had three too many Cosmos. "I'm so glad you're not."

_She thinks they're the Rippners,_ Lisa thought. _Jackson's parents._ _Oh, God._ As she swooped in, she heard Claire mutter: "Would _you _be considerin' a trip to the afterlife, missus...?"

"John, Claire: pardon me—" Lisa got herself between Joan and the smiling but darkly befuddled Mr. Carter. Or, more importantly, in terms of her mother's continued existence, between Joan and Mr. Carter's wife. "Mom. Hi."

Joan Colbert regarded her daughter at a critical arms' length while, understandably if uncourageously, the Carters, at least for now, made good their escape. "You're _not _pregnant."

"No, Mom, I told you: Jackson and I aren't planning on—"

"And where _is _Jackson...? I need to talk to that boy."

"You need to meet him first, Mom." Automatically, subconsciously, she sought Jackson out in the crowd. And when she saw him, groomed and trim in gray Armani, his striking good looks— cut-glass cheekbones, wideset clear eyes, lips just full enough to be lush— falling tonight, definitely, on the side of the angels, she felt almost like a traitor.

Joan clutched her arm and stared where her daughter was looking. "That's him—? That's _him_? Honey, tell me where I can get one."

"Oh, no," Lisa whispered, as her mother beelined for Jackson. She half hoped he wasn't armed.

She half hoped he was.

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To be continued, you betcha...!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Newsflash! I've been informed that Rosemary Wheeler is "the mother of all Mary Sues." (All of 'em. Not just a couple. The whole lot. Those of you who thought you had Mary Sues in the running can just go on home and cry. This race is **over**.) Hmm. Okay. Maybe my old and atrophied brain isn't quite clear on the definition of the term, but I thought that a "Mary Sue" was supposed to be, more or less, a character that you, as a writer, would _want_ to be. A made-up person who embodies a fantasy ideal version of yourself. _Look at me: I'm a little princess _(or the gender- and/or politically correct equivalent)_, I saved the day, everybody loves me 'cause I'm perfect,_ all that. Well, alright, I'll admit: like me, Rosemary has dark hair. (Hell, that practically makes us twins, right?) A little less like me, she is toned and witty and moderately easy on the eyes (assorted nose-breaks and all), and she's got that cool English accent going on. But she's also a petty, vindictive, selfish _and_ egotistical sociopath, and, frankly, "petty," "vindictive," "selfish (and egotistical)," and "sociopathic" aren't adjectives typically found written in glitter ink on my personal actualization wish list.

Look, I can understand that people hate Rosemary. People _should_ hate Rosemary. She is, absolutely (and as certain of you, mm hm, yep, have been more than willing to let me know), a bitch. More than that, though, she's a blast to write, and she does— or will— serve a purpose in this whole mess. But is she a "Mary Sue"...? _Nawww_.

Heck, enough with the soapboxing. I'm blathering on out here. Thanks for stopping by, folks. On with the inanity...!

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Facing his future mother-in-law was fine as long as Rippner and Lisa were together, presenting a united front. Rippner distracted Joan with a suave but noncommital smile while Lisa kept her mother busy with talk about Dallas. And then the unexpected happened. Disaster struck. Cynthia came speed-teetering over, looking desperate through a cloud of tipsiness. As far as Rippner knew, she had the night off for the party. At the moment, she looked far more panicked than anyone with a night off— and the beginnings of a sky-busting buzz— ought to look. "Lisa," she stammered, "I'm so sorry. We have a situation—"

"It's okay, Cynthia. Mom, will you excuse me...?"

"Of course, honey." Joan fixed Cynthia with a death-stare that came only a few volts short of "fatal." "But, honestly, do they expect you to do _everything_ around here?"

Lisa was looking at Rippner, not at her mother. "It's alright. I'll only be a minute."

Rippner thought his face was a stoic professional mask. Cool, calm, one hundred percent in control. Bullshit. Lisa could read him like a seismograph. A second's microscopic tremor in the muscle of his left cheek, and she saw it. He saw her see it. She squeezed his hand, leaned up to kiss him. "Be right back."

"You promise...?" he whispered.

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He was bright and personable, but bright and personable only got you so far. After that, being a desk-jockey at the Lux required finesse. And that was where the new guy, David Huxley, still needed work.

"Jeff flagged me," Cynthia said, as she and Lisa headed for the doors leading out to the lobby. "David doesn't know what to do, and this guy at Reception is getting really, _really_ irate—"

Outside the party room, Lisa stopped to the right of the run of stairs leading up to the Lux's ground-floor restaurant. A spot from which she and Cynthia could view Reception without looking like they were stampeding to the rescue.

She assessed the scene. Jeff, the junior concierge and Cynthia's sweetheart, big, broad, sandy-haired, as Iowan as a blue prairie sky, was back at his post to the right of the hotel's main doors. Behind the desk, David, tall, dark, and heroically square-jawed, was on the receiving end of an epic berating from a solid, middle-aged man in a gray suit. Beside that man, on the public side of the desk, stood a second man half a head shorter than his companion and nearly a full head shorter than David; he was slender and youngish, he wore his dark hair combed back, and he was dressed in an oak-brown suit so subtly tailored that it whistled "money" at a pitch only angels could hear. He seemed not quite anchored to the lobby tiles, as if he were rich enough to keep an eighth of an inch of air perpetually between his soles and the ground.

Lisa said: "That's him, isn't it?"

Cynthia nodded. "His name is Robert Fischer. He's super-VIP and ultra-paranoid. The man with him is—"

"That's okay, Cynthia. What's the story?"

"He's booked in the penthouse—"

— which, since the incident involving Jackson, Charles Keefe and his family, and a rocket launched from a fishing charter roughly three years ago, had been rebuilt with enough reinforcement to withstand— no kidding— a low-level nuclear strike, and which fact the publicity department of Lux Worldwide had, through sheer marketing brilliance, managed to spin into something other than "FOR GOD'S SAKE, STAY AT THE MARRIOTT: OUR HOTELS GET BLOWN UP."—

"— but he wants to know what kind of _psychic _security the hotel offers. Like telepathy or something." Cynthia came breathlessly to a halt. Her eyes were like saucers afloat in twin seas of margaritas. "Lisa, what do we tell him?"

Lisa's voice seemingly didn't rise above speaking volume: "Julie."

As if conjured out of the air, Julie Weber, the hotel's platinum-cool chief of security, appeared at her right elbow.

"I need you to speak to a guest at Reception," Lisa said to her. "Do we offer psychic security services?"

"We certainly do. Complimentary for our executive and VIP guests."

"Go. Thanks."

A nod. A tip of the smooth flaxen head. Weber headed for Reception.

"Lisa—" Cynthia stared after Julie. "—you're lying. Aren't you?"

"It's only a lie if the customer believes it is." Lisa watched as Julie slipped unobtrusively into the fray at the desk, made quiet inquiries of David and the middle-aged man, and turned to Robert Fischer with a description of the Lux's mental-defense services that Mr. Fischer, responding with sober attention and a slight, diffident smile, obviously found satisfactory, even if his companion, broadcasting a skeptical scowl over Julie's shoulder, didn't. But he wasn't the one in need of reassurance. As Jackson might put it, Mr. Fischer was the mark here, and the mark looked pleased. A minute later, Fischer and the other man, key-cards in hand, were heading for the executive express elevator, bellhop and baggage cart in their wake.

David Huxley scanned the lobby, spotted Lisa and Cynthia. _Thank you,_ he mouthed.

Lisa responded with a modest smile and an _It's nothing_ wave.

"Anything else?" she asked Cynthia.

"No-" Cynthia was still wrapping the remnants of a tequila-fuzzed frown around the concept of "psychic security services." "But I'll, umm—"

"Let me know if there is, okay?" Lisa patted her on the shoulder.

"Okay."

Lisa turned to head back to the party room. Time for rescue number two. Jackson was tough, physically and mentally, and he was more patient than he cared to admit, but even 440C stainless steel could only take so much.

At least sirens weren't screaming in the distance. EMTs and police weren't storming the lobby. She took that as a good sign.

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He was in a bad place, and he knew it. He was alone, unsure of his options, facing an enemy he'd never faced before. Best to be frank. Get it out of the way, once and for all. Rippner said to the former Mrs. Reisert: "We're not planning on having children, Joan."

"Sometimes the best plans are the ones you don't make."

Rippner shook his head. Perhaps he'd misheard. "Pardon me?"

Joan bobble-headed sagely over her latest Cosmo. "Lisa, for instance."

Maybe Rosemary had bribed the bartender into slipping something into the Opulent. Rippner wished to God it would knock him cold. "I'm sorry: I don't follow—"

Joan looked at him as though he were an idiot. A delectable idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. "If you're not 'planning' on having children, Jackson, then why are you and my daughter getting married?"

"Ah." Rippner replied patiently and clearly, for the comprehension-impaired: "Love, companionship. Mutual interests. Legal benefits. And our careers are dovetailing. It's a good fit." He found himself smiling. "Honestly, I can't imagine life without her."

Joan regarded him with equal but entirely dissimilar patience. A touch of condescension. And, Christ help him, more than a trace of interest. _That_ kind of interest. "You're a good-looking man, Jackson. A _very _good-looking man." She hadn't heard a word he said. "You and Lisa would give me _beautiful _grandchildren."

To his voda-tonic, Rippner muttered: "But, unfortunately, you'd want to give them back."

"What's that—?"

Once upon a time, the Carters had considered having old-fashioned tooth-cap cyanide capsules fitted in their field agents' mouths. Rippner's mouth included. _John, Claire, why the hell didn't you follow up on that? Don't tell me I missed the fucking memo—_

He offered Joan a death's-head smile. "Nothing, Joan. How long did you say you'd be staying in Miami...?"

#####

#####

From a safe distance, Rosemary watched the slaughter of her former field-partner and sometimes-flame in the company of Joe Reisert, who stood quietly beside her for a minute or better before finally saying, as though they'd been conversing all the while:

"And you said your name was...?"

"I didn't." She turned to him, met his black-brown eyes. "But it's Rosemary, actually. Rosemary Wheeler."

"I don't recall seeing you on the guest list."

Blunt without being outright accusing. Or rude. She could appreciate that.

"Probably because I'm not on it, Mr. Reisert."

"So you're a friend of Jackson's, then."

She couldn't help but smile at the man's logic. Couldn't help but think, too, that beneath that gruff, concerned, all-American-dad exterior lay a touch of true deadliness. After all, Joe Reisert _had_ planted a .22-calibre slug within four inches of Rippner's heart. A fact that made Rosemary smile even more.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," she said. "That's how I met Lisa. Through Jackson."

"Did you try to kill her, too?"

A modest bow of her head. A touch of confession in her tone: "Umm, yes, I did."

Joe snorted, casually sipped his whiskey-sour. Thirty seconds later, they were discussing small arms. Close-combat tactics. Rosemary found herself seeing why Rippner would like him. She liked him herself.

"There's a fine, fine line between 'vivacious' and 'vivisection,' Jackson," Reisert muttered, watching as his ex dissected Rippner. He and Rippner might have reached some sort of accord; nonetheless, at this moment, Reisert's dark eyes were smoldering with morbid satisfaction. "Remember that."

Rosemary touched her glass to his. "I'll drink to that, Joe."

#####

#####

Rippner had withstood training designed to make him impervious to torture both mental and physical. He'd been beaten, shot, stabbed, and poisoned. And here he was, seconds from cracking, in the midst of a cocktail party in his honor.

The woman— Joan, his future mother-in-law— wouldn't stop. She had Lisa knocked up half a dozen times over. She had Rippner buying Bugaboos and car seats, trading his BMWs for minivans, picking the right brand of disposable diapers, pitching in with the spit-ups and the burpings, the gastrointestinal explosions top and bottom, the two a.m. feedings, the teethings, all the little things that made it oh-so-worthwhile. She had him at first steps, first days of school. She had him at dance recitals. Christmas pageants. Seven a.m. soccer games. T-ball. Fucking Little League—

Rippner was starting to feel trapped. A little nauseous. Where the hell was Lisa? Likely unintentionally, Rosemary caught his eye. For the moment, she was alone. Joe had wandered off. Despite himself, Rippner looked back at her desperately.

Before Rosemary could read his intentions and bolt, he said, "Joan, there's someone I'd love for you to meet." He walked over to Rosemary and took her glass. "Here, Rose. Let me freshen that for you."

"Wait. No. Jackson, I'm not done with—"

Joan was tottering right at his heels. Rippner whispered in Rosemary's ear: "She's an in-law. I can't kill her."

"And I can—?"

"Joan," said Rippner, at full speaking volume, "allow me to introduce one of the most interesting people you're ever likely to encounter: Rosemary Wheeler. Say hello, Rosemary."

Hypnosis. That's how he did it. He hypnotized her with those ridiculous eyes. Before she could stop herself, before she could gut either Rippner or the woman he was foisting off on her, Rosemary found herself saying: "How do you do—?"

Beyond the vodka, the Texas tan, and the finest cosmetics Mary Kay had to offer, Joan's smiling face managed an extra degree of flush. "You're British...!"

"Why, so she is," Rippner declared. He smiled. "Pardon me, ladies."

He practically sprinted off. With her drink. Rosemary looked after him in helpless fury. _Bastard._

#####

#####

And so, for the first time that evening: trapped.

Once she realized the woman's agenda, Rosemary couldn't blame Rippner for running away. Not that she didn't hate him for it. She put on a smile and her best "This is the BBC" accent and said: "Jackson can't have babies, Joan."

"Why's that?"

"He's a boy, for one thing. Believe it or not. Wrong equipment."

A burst of tipsy laughter.

"And Jackson isn't exactly pro-natalist," Rosemary continued. "Goes with our line of work, you see."

"And what's that?"

"We implement elaborate schemes for a secret government-sanctioned organization. We run right up to the front door of terrorism, ring the bell, and scamper off."

"That's why choosing the right daycare is so important. And getting those preschool applications in as soon as possible. Work schedules can be so demanding—"

Rosemary felt as though her feet had sunken into the floor and fused with the Spancrete. She couldn't escape if she wanted to. Nothing left, short of homicide in the middle of a crowded room, than to put on a brave face. A tied-to-the-post brave face. A "Yes, please, I'll take the blindfold" face.

_Jackson, come back. All is forgiven._

Heaven help her, but she almost meant it.

#####

#####

Lisa found Jackson at the bar. Alone. He grinned when he saw her. Genuine, unguarded, relaxed. She felt a moment of deja vu, especially when he asked: "Get all your calls made?"

A second while she made the connection. Tex-Mex. Dallas. Three years ago. She smiled back at him, nodded. "No more calls." Jackson gave her space for expostulation. "At the front desk: David. You know: David Huxley—"

"The new guy, right? Cary Grant, circa 1936?"

"He hasn't quite learned the art of harmless exaggeration."

"Ah." The bartender placed a vodka tonic near his right elbow; Jackson ignored it, drank Lisa in with his eyes instead. He leaned close, kissed the dimple in her left cheek. She kissed him tenderly, maybe a little apologetically, certainly indulgently, in turn.

Observantly, too. Jackson smirked as held up his unbloodied cuffs for her to see. "I didn't harm a hair on her head, I swear."

"Then how did you manage to—" The bartender was hovering nearby, looking at Lisa with polite inquiry. "A mojito, please," she said.

Jackson waited for the man to head off in search of fresh mint. Then he nodded out across the room. "Observe the evil that we men do."

Lisa followed the trajectory of his eyes, spotted her mother talking at— the preposition in question certainly wasn't "with"— Rosemary Wheeler. "Jackson, that's practically inhumane."

Jackson took a casual sip of his vodka tonic. "We could zap her with a tufted tranquilizer dart, fit her with an ear tag and a radio collar, and move her to a quieter corner of the preserve."

"Which one?"

"Dunno." He shrugged. "Both of them?"

Rosemary had her work face on. As in, she was seeking options, an out, an escape plan. As they watched, she spotted one: Rippner's mother, passing by. Rosemary practically tackled her. Negotiated the handoff— "You two have so much in common—" — Lisa could see Rosemary mouthing the words— and fled as quickly as that ACE-bandage dress and those fuck-me heels would permit.

#####

#####

He had the temerity to speak to her again. Less than five minutes after Rosemary had abandoned Ellen Rippner to the horrors of Lisa's mother, Rippner approached her. He bore a peace offering: a tumbler deeply filled with an exotic syrup-brown liquid. "Well, are you?"

"Am I what?" Rosemary asked.

"Coming in."

"It must be contagious." She took the drink out of Rippner's hand. "Make an effort, Jackson, and don't be an idiot."

"I think it's a fair offer."

"'Don't threaten. Utilize, whenever possible.' Right?" She sipped, winced. "Christ, Jackson, what is this—?"

"It's called a Mexican Firing Squad. Compliments of Lisa. She's bet me you won't finish it."

A sweet smile and a nod, across the room, to Lisa. "Fuck you both."

Rippner watched her drain the glass. "Or not."

"Or not." She handed him the tumbler. "How much did she lose?"

"Twenty dollars. Care to make it forty?"

"It tastes like the undercarriage of a ninety-seven XJ-6. Please don't ask me how I know that."

"I'm being serious, Rose. So is Lisa."

"How unfair, having to be serious at your own party."

"Who are they, and what are they threatening you with?"

"I beg your pardon—?"

"You're afraid."

"I'm standing here, three tits to the wind, bald as brass, a crack amongst the pigeons—"

"— mutilating metaphors and getting hammered. I can see that. Be honest, Rosemary. Someone sent you. You're on assignment."

"You're amazing. You really think I came here to—"

"I know you well enough to know when you're working."

She looked at him, silently, a moment too long.

Rippner continued: "Did he threaten to have you gassed again?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Must we really do the fake-lie thing?" He moved just a bit closer. His eyes were cool and intent, but his tone was concerned: "What did you see, Rose—? Crane gave us just a whiff of that toxin, whatever it was, and Lisa and I were nearly—"

He silently invited her to replace the ellipses with an explanation. Months back, during a brief sojourn for Rosemary, a briefer investigatory trip for Jackson and Lisa, to an asylum called Arkham in upstate New York, a doctor, a psychiatrist, one Jonathan Crane, who might have passed as Jackson's double and who, doubtless and somehow, shared an employer with Miss Wheeler, had poisoned all three of them with some sort of hallucinatory nerve toxin.

Rosemary merely said: "You're standing between me and the bar, Jackson."

A moment. Rippner straightened away, stepped aside. "Of course. Enjoy the rest of the party, Miss Wheeler."

"Thank you, Mr. Rippner. And thank your lovely fiancee for me as well. Tell me, though—"

"What?"

"Why are you so willing to let me stay?"

"Like I'm sure Lisa told you, Rose: keep your enemies closer." He leaned in, murmured in her left ear: "Not to mention, you're slightly less likely to blow up the building when you're in it, aren't you?"

#####

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#####


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay! Went on a trip overseas to see Cillian Murphy in the astounding _Misterman_ at the Galway Arts Festival, and it sort of stunned me into silence. (In other words— and this will sound weird— I've been feeling too mellow to write. A most odd sensation.) Thanks for your patience. And thanks, as ever and always, for stopping by to read this stuff. (Oh, and this chapter contains a brief reference to the shenanigans in "The L Word." Just so's ya know.)

#####

#####

Thank God, the vodka was good enough to make up for Rippner and Lisa's ghastly wager. For Rosemary's work in preventing the murder of her lush-life mother, Joan Colbert, at the hands of her husband-to-be, the estimable Miss Reisert had a word with the bartenders, and from then on the top shelf was Rosemary's to drain. She thought of playing a drinking game with herself. One martini for every spin on "Will you behave, Rosemary, or do we have to throw you out...?" Only it wasn't necessary. She was, slightly to her disappointment, practically as invisible as she'd first set out to be. But, contrary to Rippner's belief, she wasn't working. Not exactly. So, despite her invisibility (or perhaps because of it), a bit too unreservedly she proceeded to partake.

Which dulled her survival instincts somewhat. For the second time that night, in short order, she was snared. Larry Reisert cornered her. He had, without her asking, let alone caring, recently obtained a degree in chemical engineering. He told her so. And though that mightn't have mattered otherwise (that, and the fact that he was Lisa Reisert's brother, and hence moderately repulsive by default), as he was a strapping specimen of young American male, he had to go and gift the _enthralled_ Miss Wheeler with an absolutely fascinating lecture about polymers. And how they were found in all manner of things you could recycle. Cans, bottles, yoghurt cups, even the bloody diaper off a baby's bum. And how they (those bloody polymers, not babies' bums) were being used to make park benches, playground equipment, and picnic tables. Right when Rosemary was feeling about in her purse for the tuck-away S.O.G. she'd brought along in case of emergency— with which to stab herself or him, she wasn't quite sure— the beautiful, delicately sleek woman with reddish-brown hair, the woman who'd kissed Rippner earlier, slipped between her and Larry.

"There you are." She kissed Rosemary full on the mouth, then beamed at her with eyes most incredibly blue. "I've been looking everywhere for you, gorgeous."

Before Rosemary could react, let alone respond, the woman hooked an arm around her waist and smiled back over her own shoulder at Larry. "Hi. You must be Larry Reisert."

"Larry—? Are you? No. I mean, yes. I, uh—"

"I'm Milla." She shook his hand. "Bashful here and I were in Lisa's sorority at FSU. Lambda Delta Gamma."

"Lisa never told me she was in a sorority."

"El-Dee-Cee. It was terrible. Shocking, really. People used to call us lesbo-dykeus-cun—"

"I'm sure Larry can fill in the rest, darling." Rosemary smiled brightly at Larry. "Excuse us, would you? Milla and I have a _lot _of catching up to do."

Milla threw in a wink. "If you take our meaning."

While Larry's recently degreed brain cells were still cycling, Rosemary towed her savior to the bar. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Milla said.

They ordered drinks. Rosemary looked back at Larry, still standing stunned with the ice cubes melting in his glass. "Who the hell are you?"

"Milla. Camilla Rippner."

"God help us. You're Jackson's sister."

"That's the first time it's entailed divine invocation." Camilla Rippner looked wryly at Rosemary. "You're Rosemary Wheeler: am I right?"

"Mm hm." From over the rim of her glass, Rosemary asked: "Are you going to tell me to behave myself?"

Milla looked her slowly up and down, in a way that made Rosemary wonder if the olive from her martini had fallen into her cleavage without her noticing. "Heavens, I hope not."

#####

#####

At a quiet table off to the side, away from the migration paths leading to the bar and the buffet, Jackson and Lisa sat with John and Claire Carter. A break while people chose their next moves: food, more drinks, dancing outside on the patio to the four-piece playing Porter, Hart, Kern, and Berlin, maybe a slip-away for a bit of quality time behind the closed door of a luxury suite upstairs. John surveyed the room. Joe Reisert and Ellen Rippner had finally gravitated together. Suitable, he thought. Quite suitable. Both of them were serious, sober, functionally somber. Even though they weren't exactly smiling, and certainly not laughing, their body language said they were hitting it off. An architect and a retired engineer: they'd have plenty to talk about. And then, like a turkey buzzard buckshot out of a prairie sky, Joan Colbert dropped between them.

"There is no God," John muttered.

Claire trained her thousand-league stare on the interloper. Watched, as John was watching, as that Stoli-addled beast gave Ellen and Joe each a look (_Isn't it an outrage?_ and _I'll do the talking, Joseph, if you don't mind,_ respectively) and launched into a harangue regarding, to the best of Claire's lip-reading skills, the reproductive intentions of the gathering's guests of honor, who were presently indulging in a bit of discreet billing and cooing to Claire's right. "What the hell is that thing?"

"That would be Lisa's mother, dearest," John replied.

"Ah. _Oh_." Claire looked at Lisa. "My condolences. And your father: oh, that poor man." Claire was Scottish by birth, and she'd been consuming her fair share of the bar's Hebridean offerings: at this point in the evening, the phrase burred forth as "pewer mon."

"I should be the one apologizing," Jackson said. "Thought for sure you'd be the one to handle her, Claire."

"Which is why you're the field operative and we're the ones in charge, you wee preening nit."

"Did she hit you with the 'kids' card, Claire?" Lisa asked.

"Like a fucking hammer. 'Three daughters...?' she says. 'Don't you wish you could've given your husband a son?'"

Jackson whistled. "I'm amazed she's still standing."

"I'm amazed she isn't vaporized," John countered. "She got me, too. 'All those daughters!' I told her I like girls."

"That's news." Said statement came, as if via ventriloquism, from Rosemary Wheeler. She, Paul Miller, and Milla Rippner were sitting one table over.

Claire looked suspiciously from her to John.

He scowled back at her. "No, she didn't try to sleep with me."

"She doesn't _try,_ John Andrew, and you know it."

Now _he _was the one looking suspicious.

"Think I'll take a second run at the buffet," Rosemary declared, getting up.

Lisa leaned casually back in her chair. "It sounds to me like you already have."

#####

Rosemary heading back for seconds triggered a general rush, or re-rush, for food. Rippner found himself moving down the line ahead of Larry Reisert. He could feel the guy watching him. Hesitating. Practically shuffling his damn feet.

Finally, Larry cleared his throat and said: "No hard feelings?"

Claire, ahead of Rippner, asked as she parsed red grapes from the chopped salad: "Now, why would there be hard feelings between you two?"

Caught between a warning glance from Rippner and the desire to be polite, Larry erred on the side of alcohol. "There was a thing a couple years back. A thing with, uh—"

Rippner amped his glance to a glare. In terms of warning shots, if Larry were a destroyer, he'd already be taking on water and sinking by the head. Quite sensibly, young Mr. Reisert hesitated—

— and then, as Claire gave him a prompting look with eyes almost as intense, if not quite as weirdly blue, as Rippner's, he sputtered on: "— me and a couple of my friends and Jackson. He came to my apartment by mistake. It was poker night—"

Rippner's kept his stare locked on his adversary. "We experienced a minor misunderstanding, Claire."

"Yeah—" Larry said. He looked into Rippner's eyes and paused. Said pause was composed primarily of fear, by the look of it. But at least he shut the hell up.

"Yeah." Rippner offered Larry a perfunctory smile, turned away, and reached for the coleslaw.

"So the whole thing," Larry continued, immediately, once Rippner's glare no longer had him pinned, "Jackson being tied up, the duct tape, the strip poker: it was all a misunderstanding."

"Wait." Claire put down the serving fork. She split a look of slow-simmering conspiracy between the two of them and asked, in a whisper that might only have been heard as far as the Keys: "Strip poker?"

"It loses something in translation, Claire," Rippner said carefully.

"— and recording the whole thing." Larry shook his head as he helped himself to mozzarella and tomatoes. "Man, that was nuts. That was _way_ out of line."

Rippner froze with a serving-spoon full of salad poised over his plate. _You can die now, Mr. Reisert._

"Y'know," said Claire, musingly, wryly, "if I didn't know better, I might think you two handsome lads had made yourselves a bit of porn."

Wry-the fuck-indeed. Why had Rippner insisted on stocking the bar with Claire's favorite whiskeys? Ardbeg, Glenmorangie, bloody Talisker. If they'd stuck with Wild Turkey and Windsor, this wouldn't be happening. As it stood, he might just as well have been a bag of birdseed burst on the sidewalk: the pigeons were swarming. In his peripherals, Paul Miller stopped with a forkful of peach cobbler halfway to his mouth: "What porn?"

Rosemary shouldered in en route to the tabbouleh. "You made a porno with a group of college boys, Jackson? This I have to see."

Larry, impaired but— God damn it— not dead, continued earnestly to pave the road to hell: "No. It was— He was tied up because we thought he was— umm— dangerous, and then his briefs got cut up kinda by accident, so we used the duct tape to—"

"Duct tape—? _Bondage_?" Milla joined the fray. Sidled up to her big brother and smiled. "Thought you were all-vanilla all-the-time." She kissed Rippner on his burning right cheek. "I'm very proud of you, Jay."

Joe Reisert, waiting with Ellen Rippner and Lisa at the carving station, listened and frowned. "Jackson made a sex tape with Larry and his friends?"

A sinking feeling in Lisa's gut. Not unlike the melting fuel rods dropping through the floor of Reactor Four at Chernobyl. "No, Dad," she said. "No. It was a joke—"

"Honey, it's okay." Reisert chipped the flint from his expression as he looked at his girl. "And it's okay if you had other interests, too. College is a time for experimentation, right?"

"What? What other interests—?"

"Larry explained it to me."

"Explained what, Dad?"

A nightmare in four words: "About you and Rosemary."

Lisa swore she felt her heart stop. Not agonizingly, like an infarction. Mechanically, more like. Like a second-hand halting after one last tick. Her voice was flat: "What about me and—"

Rosemary, bearing a plate laden with goodies to which she had no right whatsoever, appeared beside her. Looked at Lisa angelically. Meaningfully. Squeezed her hand and gazed deep into her eyes. "Here's to the _best_ sorority at FSU. And the most incredible sorority sister I could ever have." She smiled. "Emphasis on _have,_ of course."

#####

A fermata. A stricken lacuna. The two of them, ten feet apart, alone in a crowd.

Rippner looked at Lisa. She looked back at him. Their eyes met.

Some enchanted evening. Across a crowded room. All that crap. Not quite in lockstep with the theme, but close enough, out on the patio, in the balmy Miami night, the four-piece was playing "Isn't It Romantic?"

Rippner thought that most days he had a temperature. That night, some two years back, with Larry and his buddies, and the duct tape and the beer and being tied up, he had a temper. He told himself now that Larry half-snorting booze out of his nose as he tried so sincerely to describe what really happened was payback enough. Probably something somewhere in the guide to a solid marriage about not killing your future wife's siblings out-of-hand. And about taking it all in stride when the number-two rumor at your engagement party (right behind, number-one-with-a-bullet, your having participated in a boisterous bout of BDSM with a group of frat boys) was that your future wife had been in a lesbian sorority at Florida State. Especially, after all, when your father-in-law seemed cool with the idea.

Nevertheless, he wasn't quite untempted to nod when Rosemary slipped by and murmured: "Do you want me to blow something up now?"

#####

#####

Well, at least one thing turned out right.

Rosemary Wheeler usually wasn't much for nonsexual contact in bed, let alone spooning, but for once, just this once, it was okay.

_I took him away from you, Reisert, you cheap little cow._

She lay pressed against Jackson Rippner's back, sleepily counting the freckles on his right shoulder blade. His skin was warm and smooth; he smelled good, too: a hint of floral musk, like violets. She recognized the scent much as she was facing the morning light: without wincing. Odd: she wasn't hung over.

Nor could she remember the sex. No surprise, there: there'd never been anything all that memorable about Mr. Earnest's carnal ministrations— as Reisert had, by now, no doubt realized.

Rosemary smiled, feeling smug if slightly unsated.

And then she thought how the pattern of freckles at the base of Rippner's neck wasn't quite right. And how his brown hair was just a shade too reddish and a bit too long.

And how her right hand, attached to the right arm she had draped over his waist, was cupping what felt very much like a woman's breast.

She drew her hand away. She edged by centimeters away from the freckled back.

"Jackson" sighed and rolled over and smiled at her. "Morning, gorgeous."

Rosemary found herself staring back at Milla Rippner.

"... morning," she echoed, hollowly.

"Sleep well?" Milla asked.

"Where are my clothes?" Rosemary heard herself reply.

Milla raised her head, looked about. "There," she said, pointing toward the window. A clothy something was hanging from the curtain rod. "And there," with a nod toward the bathroom door. "And—" —leaning for a look at the floor— "— there, and there—"

Rosemary lay back. She pulled the flat sheet over her chest and said to the ceiling: "Oh... fuck."

Milla lay back beside her. "Afraid not, toots."

"What?"

"There are rules about such things. Even for raging omnisexuals like yours truly."

"You mean we didn't—?"

"No. Except for the fondling— which was all of one tit, and all your doing, by the way— not a bit of it. I think it was the third Mexican Firing Squad that did you in."

"You need to tell me one thing. The last thing I remember was the karaoke. There was no karaoke, was there?"

"Erm, no. Not officially."

"Shit."

"Anyway, I had no idea where your room was— or even if you _had _a room. I couldn't let you drive. Jackson was all for tipping you into the nearest canal."

"Asshole."

"That's what I thought. So I brought you up here. Where you proceeded to paw me and tear off your clothes. All the while bellowing 'If I Can't Have You.' You made a break for the balcony. Twice."

"Christ, I didn't."

"Yvonne Elliman's greatest hit, or the balcony?"

"Either. Or." Rosemary frowned her eyes closed. "Fuck."

"Nothing happened." Milla kissed her, gently, on the lips. Added, by way of friendly critique: "You taste like a varnish factory."

"Why are you being so good to me?"

"Isn't it apparent?"

"Because Jackson asked you to." Rosemary opened her eyes, looked up at her. "Right?"

Milla looked back at her frankly. "Yes, he did. Does that make you angry?"

"You should be the one who's angry. Your own brother, pimping you out...?"

"It was more of a suggestion, actually. I showed up without a date. And I didn't have to say 'yes.'"

"But you did." Rosemary unspooled a slightly more languid look at her bedmate. Unhurried, contemplative. "I thought you were him just now. Jackson."

"I guessed as much."

"And you know what...?"

"What?"

"I don't really mind that you're not."

For a long moment, Milla looked into her eyes. Then she kissed Rosemary on the forehead, the left cheek, the right. Rosemary relaxed, closed her eyes again.

"We have two tickets for the breakfast buffet," Milla said. "Care to join me?"

"The police would have been here by now, right?"

"Mm hm. Or hotel security. Julie Weber was looking daggers at you when I hauled you out of the party room."

"Just one more thing. Why am I not hung over?"

"Applied quantum mechanics."

Rosemary opened her eyes and said, flatly: "What?"

"I'm a physicist."

"Are you going to tell me that you gave me something that altered the chemistry of my brain at a subatomic level?"

"Are you going to argue it if I do?"

"No. I think I can live with not having a skull-full-of-superheated-sawdust migraine wrapped around the urge to vomit."

"Good." Milla sat up, stretched sleep from her shoulders and back. "Actually, it's a combination of aspirin and herbs that we use when we're really burning the midnight oil at CERN. That, and about a gallon of water." She grinned. "One glass for every chorus of "Night Fever."

One last time, Rosemary muttered a "Fuck." at the white ceiling.

"Maybe later." Milla looked down at her slyly. "If you're lucky."

#####

#####

Two floors above and a bit to the north, Jackson Rippner and Lisa Reisert shared their waking in a junior suite. During her years of employment at the Lux, she'd never stayed at the hotel. Not officially. Now that she'd be leaving, it had made her to-do list. She arched in a long, contented stretch against the good mattress and the cool smooth threading of the flat sheet on the king-size bed that she and Rippner were occupying like their own private Delaware and said, in well-rested summation: "Other than the fact that our unofficial co-hostess was a convicted psychopath, and everyone thinks I spent my college years exploring my sapphic side while you starred in a gay orgy with my brother, I think it went really smoothly."

A long pause. Beside her, Rippner, the back of his head resting in his pillowed hands, focused his too-clear gaze on the ceiling. A smile twitched at the corners of his lips.

"What?" Lisa asked.

"Just thinking."

"About...?"

"About you. With, umm—"

"No."

"I mean, the thought of you and Rose—"

"Don't go there."

"— it _is_ kind of hot, if you know what I—"

"Shut up. I mean it."

"Did you ever take pictures—?"

Lisa punched him in the chest. "You are a sick, sick man."

"I know." Rippner felt his smacked pectoral. "_Ouch._ So, what now?"

Guilt. Lisa's expression softened with it. She moved his hand, gently kissed his chest. "We could throw my college flame out of the breakfast buffet."

"Don't think Milla's done with her yet."

Lisa propped herself on her elbow, looked at him. "Doesn't that worry you, Jackson? Seriously."

"Rosemary might be a survivor, Lise, putting it charitably, but Milla's a force of nature. They'll be okay."

"How about us? What do we do now?"

In response, Rippner shifted the last possible bit closer to her. Rolled her onto her back. Him half on top. An embrace. An adjustment of knees, of thighs and hips, of bellies and what lay— or rose— below. He nuzzled Lisa's jaw, kissed her deeply. Lisa ran her hands up his back, tangled fingers gently in his hair, kissed him in return.

When their lips parted, he smiled down at her. "Room service...?"

Lisa smiled back. "Ask me again in an hour."

Rippner sighed contentedly, closed his eyes, and let himself be pulled in for another kiss. Hell, compared to last night's party, their wedding— on a date and and at a location he might suggest they not make entirely public— was going to be a cakewalk.

Right?

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**THE END**


End file.
